Official: ‘Tory Conference Not a Car Crash,’ Says Party Chairwoman

By Iain Martin

AFP/Getty Images

The Tory Party chairwoman, Baroness Warsi, has just been on “The Daily Politics” with Andrew Neil. I don’t think she’ll do the show again in a hurry. It wasn’t exactly an assured performance by one of the party’s most senior figures.

She was asked repeatedly: Did the cabinet discuss the child benefit change? She wouldn’t say, over and over again.

Is it true that Conservative Party membership has plummeted by a third to just 177,000. Again, she wouldn’t say with her face like thunder. What, she asked, did her questioner mean by membership? That’ll be, er… being a card-carrying member?

Hadn’t the Tory conference been a child benefit related “car crash”? She thought for a moment: “It hasn’t been a car crash.”

Comments (4 of 4)

Would that be the same noble baroness, recently (over-)promoted to be an authority on things democratic, who has never herself been elected to anything?

1:51 pm October 6, 2010

Hugo Chav wrote :

Scary,

P.S.

The Cameroons (Innocent Smoothies) seem only to be able to relate to Harrods, Selfridges and Waitrose shoppers. They just don't get the Tesco & Asda shopper. It is like watching a slow mo car crash.

1:49 pm October 6, 2010

Hugo Chav wrote :

Scary,

I know what you mean. I was so disgusted by the election campaign I thought of cancelling my party memberhsip. The Innocent Smoothies are leaving "grafters" like me very vexed.

1:45 pm October 6, 2010

Scary Biscuits wrote :

Let's face it. The Cameroons are a disaster. They think they walk on water, that they're the pros, brilliant at PR and triangulation etc. The reality is that the last three conferences have seen Tory support fall as a direct result of them. The one before the election that wasn't was also nearly a disaster and was only saved by Osborne conceeding the inheritance tax cut, which he subsequently back-pedalled on, contributing to us not winning the election.

The Cameroons seem to be the only people that actaully believed Brown when he said he had abolished boom and bust. When his hubris was revealed, they had no answer. The 2008 conference was an embarrassed vaccum and in 2009 they simply used the recession to water down their pledges on tax cuts, with inevitable consequences.

Membership is down by a third because the Cameroons dispise ordinary people like us. In this they think they're aping Blair in picking a fight with the extremists and so connecting with voters. The trouble is there is no Tory version of Clause 4 or Militant and instead of picking fights with what they think are right wing nutters they are actually alienating ordinary people. Cameron needs to fire people like Steve Hilton and make peace with the membership. Then he'll stand a chance of winning the next election.